


City of Lonely Hearts

by merle_p



Category: Glee
Genre: Adultery, Angst, F/M, Future Fic, Heartbreak, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-02
Updated: 2010-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-10 04:38:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/pseuds/merle_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The expression on Kurt’s face, when he’s standing over the laundry basket, t-shirt of Finn’s in his hands, will haunt Finn until the end of his days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	City of Lonely Hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quichey](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=quichey).



> The prompt was: _Glee, Finn/Kurt, Empire State of Mind_. This is part of my "Instead of Hugs" campaign. Although you'll probably need another hug after this, because it's angsty. Very angsty.

**_8 million stories out there and they're naked_**  
(Jay-Z, Empire State of Mind)

 

 

**1.FINN**

Later, Finn can’t even remember why he did it anymore.

 

 

He thought he had erased all the traces, but he’s forgotten that Kurt knows Mercedes even better than he knows Finn.

Kurt knows what a hair of Mercedes looks like on the white of a woolen sweater. He knows what lipstick color she uses, what kind of perfume she wears.

The expression on Kurt’s face, when he’s standing over the laundry basket, t-shirt of Finn’s in his hands, will haunt Finn until the end of his days.

 

 

He ends up on Mercedes’ door step, overnight bag under his arm.

“What do you want here?” she asks, voice hostile. Her eyes are red.

“Kurt kicked me out,” he says, voice already breaking, and she takes a step back.

“And you have the nerve to come here?” she asks. “I just lost the best thing that ever happened to me. Believe me, you are the last person I want to see.”

She closes the door in his face, and Finn sits for three hours in the Starbucks around the corner before he finds the courage to knock on Mike’s door.

“I should punch you in the face,” Mike says when he hears what happened, but he lets Finn have the couch anyway.

 

 

Kurt always used to talk about how beautiful Mercedes was. Gorgeous, he called her, breath-taking. Finn never really got it. When it came to women (and men), he always preferred the small, fragile type.

That night, he finally understood. Mercedes was dark, where Kurt was pale; soft and curvy where Kurt was muscles and bones; pliant and sensual where Kurt was stubborn and fierce.

That night, he saw her through Kurt’s eyes, and she was beautiful, and different, and new – but the second he’d reached his high, the truth of what he’d done came back to him, and he crashed, so deep and so hard that he wasn’t sure he’d survive when he'd finally hit the ground.

 

 

“How is he?” Finn asks when Mike comes home from the theater, long after midnight.

Mike shakes his head, tired and resentful.

“Finn,” he says, “I let you sleep on my couch because you are my friend. But I’m not going to risk losing my best friend over this.”

“I didn’t know you and Kurt were so close,” Finn says helplessly.

“We roomed together in college. We went to Julliard together. We work together on a Broadway show,” Mike says. “We spend 12 hours a day together and more. It would be awful if we weren’t friends.”

And that's the problem right there, Finn thinks: 12 hours at the theater, a 2-hour-lunch with Mercedes, 6 hours of sleep. That’s Kurt’s day, and Finn doesn’t have to be good at math to know where that leaves himself.

“I miss him,” Finn says, “I missed him.”

And Mike’s face softens.

“I know.”

 

 

**2.MERCEDES**

She keeps reaching for the phone. Four weeks, and he is still the first person she thinks of when something happens that she wants to share.

The first days, she kept calling his cell non-stop, until he finally blocked her number. Now she just stares at her Iphone, finger hovering over the touch screen, before she drops it, defeated.

For twenty years, they shared everything: secrets, make-up, ice-cream, pain. And in weak moments, she tries to tell herself that it’s Kurt’s own fault, for taking her hand all those years ago and saying seriously: “What’s mine belongs to you, too.”

But she knows it’s a lie. Truth is – this is not how it was supposed to be, how they pictured it the night of their prom, when they posed for the photo, arm in arm, his mouth warm and dry against her cheek. They were supposed to share an apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, go on double-dates with pretty, artsy men, shop clothes in the Cast Iron District, send their children to the same primary school.

Instead, Kurt shares a bed with the love of his life, his as-good-as-husband, while Mercedes comes home from the studio to a quiet apartment and a cat. The cat is neurotic and aggressive from being locked up in the house the whole day, and the apartment is too big, too stylish for her, and more nights than not, she ends up eating Korean take-out in front of the TV before she caves and calls Kurt’s cell.

Or at least, that’s how it used to be, before that fateful night.

She was jealous, she knows that now, longing for impossible things. She wanted what Kurt had, and at the same time, she wanted _him_ – the feeling dulled after decades of wanting, but still there, almost like a part of her now, making all his touches, his hugs, his _platonic_ kisses feel like a mockery of her pain.

And then Finn called her, morose and drunk, accusing her: “You see him more often than I do,” and they came together that night, in the understanding that they both longed for the same thing, that for just a couple of hours, they both wanted to forget.

But Kurt was there with them the whole time: in the way Finn’s hands stuttered over her breasts, in the way her fingers shied away from the coarse hair in his arm pits and the rough pads of his feet.

The next morning, she couldn’t even look at Finn. _How could you do that to Kurt?_ she wanted to ask, but the words died on her tongue, together with the flutter of hope in her heart.

 

**3.KURT**

“How are you, son?” his father asks when he calls him on a Sunday that is as stormy and dark as the vacated room in Kurt’s heart.

Kurt clenches his teeth and breathes, then gives the mirror in the hallway a fake-smile and says: “I’m fine, Dad, everything is fine.”

His father is quiet. “Kurt,” he finally says. “I know what happened with Finn and Mercedes.”

Kurt’s grip on his phone tightens, as his father sighs. “Finn told his mom, and she told me.” A pause. “You know that he’s devastated.”

“So what, you want me to feel sorry for him?” Kurt bites out. The sudden anger is threatening to cut off his air.  “I should have known you’d take his side.”

“Is that really what you think?” His father sounds sad, and suddenly very old. “I told Finn that I don’t want to see him until he’s fixed this. Carole understands.”

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Kurt says, voice shaky, and his father snorts quietly.

“Don’t apologize, Kurt. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

Kurt swallows. “There’s a purple box in the closet in my old room. The label says _Kurt & Mercedes’ Box of Memories_. Do you think you could send it to me?”

“Of course,” Burt says. “I’ll get it right now. Kurt – is there anything of Finn’s that you want me to send you?”

“No,” Kurt says. “Everything in this city makes me think of him. I don’t need another reminder.”

 

 

Kurt runs into one of Finn’s students on the Hudson River Greenway near Christopher Street. He met him the past summer when he agreed to help Finn with the drama club at his school. The kids thought it was hilarious to call him “Mrs. Hudson” and Kurt found that he didn’t really mind.

Not even when it was Jake, who always said it with a smirk that seemed both salacious and condescending. Kurt was wary of him, because he reminded him too much of Puck, and he should probably be surprised to find him hanging out in the Village – but then, maybe not.

“Jake,” he says softly, trying to work up a smile. “How are you?”

The boy ignores his question and frowns at him, eyes narrowed to slits. “Is it true that you and Mr. H. broke up?” he asks, and Kurt suddenly has to struggle for air.

“It’s a temporary separation,” he finally says, mask of superiority firmly in place, even while he’s trying not to throw up.

He doesn’t know what to expect, but it’s not this expression of pity and genuine sympathy. “That sucks,” Jake says. “We thought you’d help us with our new play.”

“I – “ Kurt says, and then the world blurs before his eyes.

Later, he will be embarrassed that he ended up crying into the shirt of a roughneck high school kid on the stairs of a dingy sex shop for the good part of an hour. But Jake’s shoulder is firm and strong when he wraps an arm around him, his voice soothing when he tries to calm him down, and for a while, Kurt allows himself to soak in the far too familiar scent of adolescent high school jock.

 

 

**4.MIKE**

Kurt kisses him at the premiere party, in the corner next to the restrooms of the club. It’s well past two am, Kurt is so drunk that he can barely keep himself upright, and Mike kisses him back for a wistful second before he pushes him back.

“No,” he says. “Kurt, stop.”

He’s got his hands on Kurt’s elbows, and Kurt doesn’t even try to argue with him, just sags against him, deflated, spiritless.

“Nobody wants me,” he says against Mike’s tank top, lips grazing his chest.

Mike’s laugh is dry, humorless. “You know that’s not the problem.”

Kurt half-sobs, chuckles hysterically. “I almost slept with one of Finn’s students last week. He was willing, I could tell. See how desperate I am?”

“You need to talk to them,” Mike says, and Kurt shakes his head.

"Not yet," he says, almost pleadingly. "Not yet."

Mike curls a hand around his jaw, forcing Kurt to look up at him. “You need to figure this out before it kills you.”

“It’s this city,” Kurt slurs. “It's the city that kills us. New York, city of lonely hearts, city of destroyed dreams.“ He laughs bitterly. “We were so greedy, so hungry for fame. Now look where it got us.”

Mike remembers Matt saying something very similar, the day before he died. "Do you think it was worth it?" he'd asked, voice barely a whisper, and Mike had been too busy not to cry to come up with an answer. It's been seven years, but there's still a hole in his heart that was never properly darned, threadbare patch threatening to rip open any day, and especially on nights like this.

It's time for them to go home.

 

 

The carpet of Finn and Kurt's usually spotless living room is a sea of old pictures. Some of them are ripped to shreds, pieces scattered across the couch table, and when Mike picks up a couple of them, he recognizes Mercedes' dark red prom dress, Kurt's velvety suit.

He knows that picture, remembers their smiles, painfully wide and so hopeful, remembers how close they were standing, looking like nothing could ever come between them.

"Do you think it can be fixed?" Kurt asks helplessly, and Mike knows he isn't just talking about the pictures.

He doesn't know the answer, though, so he flees, leaves Kurt kneeling on the floor amid the bitter-sweet memories of friendship and love.

He wants to go home, grieve for his own lost friend over pictures similar to the ones Kurt ripped apart, but Finn is still staying on his couch, mourning the marriage that he ruined, so he wanders the night-dark streets of Chelsea instead, heads down 9th Avenue towards the Meatpacking District where people are still up at this time of night, where lights are still blinking.

Under a flickering street light, he pauses, staring at the moon over the Hudson River, and wonders if they would be happier if they had never come here, to New York.

If they had stayed in Lima, Ohio.


End file.
